


Dean Winchester's Life, an Essay: The End was Perfect

by OneShotWonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x20, Gen, Opinion Piece, Supernatural Essay, The End, The ending, series ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:29:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29653413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneShotWonder/pseuds/OneShotWonder
Summary: An essay describing how the cannon series ending was the only way it could have ended peacefully for both brothers. I take a look at quotes from seasons 1-15 to categorically showcase Dean Winchester's life and emotions, concluding on that fact that he got exactly what he deserved, peace.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Dean Winchester's Life, an Essay: The End was Perfect

In this essay I plan to lay out the life of Dean Winchester and categorically show that the ending of the series, the ending of Dean’s life, was the only possible happy ending for both brothers, but especially Dean. 

In order to lay the foundation of this argument we have to first establish a few basic facts. Firstly, that Dean never enjoyed the hunting life. Secondly, that his guilt consumed him so he felt forced to continue hunting. And lastly, that he hated the hunting life for his brother, Sam. 

We are introduced to Dean in Season 1 as someone who loves the hunting life, roping Sam back into the hunt for the demon that killed their mother. But even as early as Season 1 we see that he has been traumatized by what happened to their mother, and maybe his carefree attitude is not all that it appears to be.

> “See when I was your age I saw something real bad happen to my mom, and I was scared too.” -Dean Season 1 “Dead in the Water”

> “...and then you tell me that I gotta go back home, especially when... when I swore to myself I would never go back there.” -Dean Season 1 “Home”

In Season 2 we get a concrete explanation that Dean doesn’t enjoy the hunting life as much as he lets on. When the Croatoan virus infects Sam, he stays with him, admitting how tired he is.

> “You can keep going” -Sam

> “Who says I want to?...I’m tired Sam, I’m tired of this job, this life, this weight on my shoulders man, I am tired of it…” - Dean Season 2 “Croatoan”

But if we go back further into Dean’s childhood we can see that even at 16 years old Dean admits to his young crush Robin that he doesn’t want to hunt. 

> “What’s your Dad do?” -Robin
> 
> “Boring stuff” -Dean
> 
> “Do you like it?” -Robin
> 
> “No, not really.” -Dean Season 9 “Bad Boys”

Of course, in the beginning of Season 2, after the car crash when Dean is a ghost he also starts to show his true feelings about how he grew up and about how he feels about his Dad. 

> “I have done everything you have ever asked me, everything! I’ve given everything I’ve ever had! ...What the hell kinda father are you?” -Dean Season 2 “In my Time of Dying”

In Season 2 we also get the entire episode of “What is and What Should Never Be” where Dean’s dream, when infected by the djinn, is to have a normal life, with his mom alive and a girlfriend. He even confesses this in front of his father’s grave. 

> “It's like my old life is comin’ after me or something, like it doesn’t want me to be happy….But why, why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kinda hero?...Why do we have to sacrifice everything Dad?” 

> “I wanted to stay, I wanted to stay so bad. I mean ever since Dad- all I can think of is how much this job has cost us.” -Dean Season 2 “What is and What Should Never Be”

In Season 3 we also get a clear picture of how Dean feels about himself and about his life when he confronts a mirror image of himself in the dream world. 

> “I know how dead you are inside, how worthless you feel...I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, I mean after all you’ve got nothing outside of Sam. You are nothing, you’re as mindless and obedient as an attack dog.” -Dream Sequence Dean Season 3 “Dream a Little Dream of Me”

He has always described the hunting life as something horrible, warning as many people to stay away as possible. 

> “Jo, you got options, no one in their right mind chooses this life. My dad started me in this when I was so young, I wish I could do something else.” -Dean Season 2 “No Exit”

> “This life, hunting, monsters, there is no joy in it. There’s nothing but pain, horror, and death.” -Dean Season 13 “Patience”

There are many more instances that paint a clear picture of how Dean never enjoyed or wanted the hunting life, but these are the major ones. Now that we have shown definitively that Dean would not hunt given the choice, we have to explore _why_ he continues hunting. 

The first and clear reason is that he was indoctrinated into the life by his father and he feels it is his responsibility to protect Sam and the world from harm. As well as in the early seasons to avenge his mother’s death. 

From a young age we see that Dean was trained by his father in various flashbacks throughout the seasons. Those familiar with the show will know this for a fact so I don’t feel the need to catalogue each instance. 

So if we can agree that Dean was raised in the life and he felt he had no other choice than to hunt, we then need to explore why, even after he admitted he didn’t like it, he continued to do so? The answer to this is simple: guilt and shame. We have seen clearly throughout the series that Dean is a walking ball of guilt and shame, but it started as early as Season 1 in Faith, when his life was saved over another's. 

> “So Marshal Hall died to save me?” 
> 
> “But Sam, some guy is dead now because of me!”-Dean Season 1 “Faith”

So Dean already feels that his life shouldn't have been saved over someone else. This guilt is compounded in Season 2 when John then sacrifices himself to save Dean. His father, who he looked up to and loved more than anyone else in the world, gave his life so Dean could live. 

> “How could he do it? How am I supposed to live with that?...He should have gone out fighting, that was supposed to be his legacy. Not this.” -Dean Season 2 “Crossroad Blues

> “You can't tell me there's not a connection there. I don't know how the demon was involved. I don't know how the whole thing went down exactly, but dad's dead because of me and that much I do know... I never should have come back Sam, it wasn't natural, and now look what's come of it. I was dead and I should've stayed dead. You wanted to know I was feeling, well that's it. So tell me, what could you possibly say to make that alright?” -Dean Season 2 “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”

These two instances would be enough for Dean to feel guilty for an eternity, but his shame peaks in Season 4, when he reveals what he did in hell. 

> “I got off that rack, god help me I got right off it, and I started ripping ‘em apart. I lost count of how many souls. The things that I did to them...How I feel, this, inside me, I wish I couldn't feel anything Sammy, I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing.” -Dean Season 4 “Heaven and Hell”

This is a turning point for Dean. It fundamentally changes who he is as a person. From this point forward, hunting, instead of being the only thing he knows how to do, becomes the only thing he _can_ do. He feels like he can’t stop hunting or saving people, because he has to make up for all the bad he did while he was in hell. 

He states this in Season 5, when he talks to the psychiatrist in the mental hospital. 

> “It's my job, somebody’s got to save people’s asses, yours included.” -Dean
> 
> “...how many people do you have to save?” -Dr. Cartwright
> 
> “All of them.” -Dean
> 
> “You think you have to save everyone?” -Dr. Cartwright
> 
> “Yup, whole wide world of sports.” -Dean
> 
> “...It's the end of the world, it's a damn biblical apocalypse, and if I don’t stop it and save everyone then no one will and we all die.” -Dean Season 5 “Sam, Interrupted”

He makes it clear here that he feels the need to save every person in the world. That even one death would mean failure for him. So each subsequent death in the series just reinforces the fact that Dean’s guilt and shame are growing. That he can never stop hunting because he can never save enough people to feel satisfied enough to retire. 

> “That’s one deep, dark nothing you got there Dean...I can see inside you Dean! I can see how broken you are, how defeated, you can’t win and you know it but you just keep fighting...inside you’re already dead.” -Famine Season 5 “My Bloody Valentine”

So he has to go on, despite not wanting to, despite being so tired and empty and giving up over and over again. He clearly doesn’t want this life, he wants to die and be in peace. But his guilt and shame won’t let him. 

> “There is always something eating at me! It's who I am. Something happens, I feel responsible.” -Dean Season 7 “Shut up, Dr. Phil”

We see this clearly when they want to start the trials to close the gates of hell.

> “I'm a grunt, Sam. You're not. You've always been the brains of this operation. And you told me yourself, you see a way out. You see a light at the end of this ugly ass tunnel. I don't. But I tell you what I do know, is that I'm going to die with a gun in my hand. Because that's what I have waiting for me, that's all I have waiting for me.” -Dean Season 8 “Trial and Error”

As the seasons go on this guilt just gets compounded by his actions when he was infected with the Mark of Cain, and subsequently, becoming a demon. It seems that Dean as a character is destined to keep making mistakes and hurting people, which only makes his guilt grow. So no matter how much he doesn’t like hunting, or how much he might want to stop, he feels he can’t. He is stuck “saving people and hunting things.” 

> "There's some stuff you just gotta let go. Okay? The people you let down, the ones you can't save... You gotta forget about 'em, for your own good." -Dean
> 
> "Is that what you do? - Castiel
> 
> "That's the opposite of what I do. But I ain't exactly a role model." -Dean Season 10 "The Things We Left Behind"

We then see the fire go out of him in the last few seasons. It is highlighted time and time again how tired Dean is, how he just wants to give up, even how he wants to die. 

> “You knew the world would be better without us in it...Look at the tape, Sam. Evil tracks us. It nukes everything in our vicinity, our family, our friends, it’s time we put a proper name to what we really are and deal with it.” -Dean 10x23 “Brother’s Keeper”

> “I need you to keep the faith, for both of us. ‘Cause right now, I… Right now I don’t believe in a damn thing.” -Dean Season 13 “The Big Empty”

> “Sam, I’m not okay. I’m pretty far from okay. You know, my whole life, I always believed that what we do was important. No matter what the cost, no matter who we lost, whether it was Dad or – or Bobby or… And I would take the hit. But I kept on fighting because I believed that we were making the world a better place. And now Mom and Cas… And I– I don’t know. I don’t know.” -Dean Season 13 “Advanced Thanatology”

> “Maybe you’re not that guy anymore, the guy who saves the world, the guy who always thinks he’ll win, no matter what… You have changed, and you tell people its not a big deal, you tell people you’ll work through it. But you know you won’t, you can’t, and that scares the hell out of you...You wanna die.” -Billie Season 13 “Advanced Thanatology”

> “Buried's not safe enough. Plan is, pay a little hush money, charter a boat to take me out to the Pacific. Splash….Well, maybe you need to learn, okay? 'Cause when people are past the point of saving, maybe you need to learn to walk away.” -Dean Season 14 “Damaged Goods

So now we have established that Dean did not want the hunting life, but continues to go along with it due to his immense guilt and shame. He feels like there is nothing else he can do. We have also seen how as the seasons go on, he is slowly giving up, getting more and more tired, and each hardship or death falls a little harder on his shoulders. 

So lastly, we will explore how Dean wants Sam to have a normal life. We know Dean came to get Sam at college, but as the years go on, we also see he starts to feel guilty about it. About needing his brother by his side. Because it becomes very clear that Dean wants Sam to have a normal life. And Dean believes that the thing that is stopping him from living a normal life isn’t hunting, but Dean himself. 

We know Dean feels the need to protect Sam. This has been highlighted so much in the series, but I think it especially hit home in Season 3, when Dean sacrifices his life to save Sam’s. 

> “Don't get mad at me. Don't you do that. I had to. I had to look out for you. That's my job.” -Dean Season 2 “All Hell Breaks Loose”

We also hear about it when Sam wants to do the trials to close the gates of hell. 

> “But I tell you what I do know, is that I'm going to die with a gun in my hand. Because that's what I have waiting for me, that's all I have waiting for me. I want you to get out. I want you to have a life, become a Man of Letters, whatever. You with a wife, kids, and grandkids, living out until you're fat and bald and chugging Viagra. That is my perfect ending and it's the only one I'm gonna get. So I'm gonna do these trials and I'm gonna do them alone. End of story. You stay here.” -Dean Season 8 “Trial and Error”

So finally, if we put all this together, we know that Dean can’t stop hunting. We know that Sam will continue to hunt with him if Dean is alive. We know that Dean will continue to deteriorate mentally, as he has done in the last three seasons. So there would be no peace for either of them if they continued as is. We know Sam wants a normal life. We know this because when Dean was gone he tried to get it back, save the time he was addicted to demon blood and wanted revenge on Lilith. 

In conclusion, I truly believe the series could not have ended any other way. It has been established since very early in the series that Dean knows he will die hunting and he is ok with it. So the only way for him to find peace is to go to heaven, and to know that Sam gets to have the normal life he always dreamed of. 

People have been saying Dean deserved better, but this was the best he could have had. Unless the series went a completely different way. He got everything he wanted, he finally was able to find peace. Hunting was never peaceful for him, it was never the life he wanted, but he didn't have a choice. Giving Sam the life he wants was everything Dean could hope for. That was his happiness. 

Sam loved his brother, but he didn’t want to hunt. Even though he accepted it after a while and even told Charlie he wouldn't choose differently, we know from many of his experiences, that he could and would choose a normal life, given the choice. Most of the series was set up to show us how Sam didn’t want to be a hunter. There are so many episodes that highlight this fact.

Of course, Sam was devastated to lose his brother, but I think a part of him knew that Dean needed to go to heaven to gain peace. And that gave Sam a chance to get the “apple pie” life he always wished for. 

In the end, I believe that this was the only way for both brothers to be happy and find peace. And they deserve it, after everything they have been through, they deserve it more than any character in any TV show I can think of.


End file.
